Nuwara Eliya

Project Ceylon!

Next up, again chosen according to product number. I suspect this is really the easiest way to do it. No dithering about what to do next. Anyway, this one is high grown, and from more or less right in the middle of the highlands.

I can tell a huge difference already in the dry leaf when compared to the mid-elevation Kenilworth from yesterday. This one is sharper and brighter, quite grassy but also with a brief smidge of something leather-y and wood-y underneath. This is well hidden, though. It smells like a summer-y tea.

I’m not actually getting much aroma from the brewed cup, though, but what I am getting is giving me an impression of a smoothed out version of the dry leaf aroma.

That sharpish grassy note rather concerned me, because it’s the very thing that makes me not very fond of Darjeeling, but luckily, the tea doesn’t actually turn out to be all that Darjeeling-y. There is a Darj-esque grassy note, yes, but it doesn’t have the same sort of sour quality that I seem to find in Darjeelings. It’s more tolerable here, because it doesn’t give me that long, sour aftertaste. It has quite a floral top note as well, but not overwhelmingly so.

Underneath all that, we’re back with the wood-y, leather-y sorts of flavours. They’re light and sort of spring-y (boing!) feeling compared to the heavy darkness of yesterday’s Kenilworth. This feels more like a ladies’ tea. If we recycle the business man’s study from yesterday, this would be the sort of tea the wives would be drinking while thinking up ways to back-stab each other so as to further their own social standing.

I haven’t had this one before, it seems, so I can’t tell you whether I agree with myself on it. I find it pleasant, but if given the choice I would prefer the mid-elevation Kenilworth.

Reference map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=211803378882467968316.0004d6ff92c6d663176b9